Anger makes people do things they never should.
Sin had done exactly that.
His feet wouldn't move. The darkness in front of his eyes wasn't just the unlit kitchen anymore — it was something deeper, something that had crawled inside his skull and refused to leave.
He had watched someone die for the first time in his life. And that someone wasn't a stranger.
It was his own sister.
Mom threw herself at Reena, heart hammering so loud Sin could almost hear it.
The knife had gone in deep. Too deep. Blood had already soaked through Reena's clothes and spread across the kitchen floor in a dark, silent pool.
"Reena—" Mom's voice broke. "Reena, get up. Nothing's going to happen to you. I won't let anything happen to you."
Reena didn't answer.
Sin stood there like a statue carved from stone. He couldn't blink. Couldn't breathe properly. His brain kept rejecting what his eyes were showing him.
The blood kept spreading.
Reena's chest stopped moving.
Mom already knew. She pulled Reena into her arms anyway, rocking her slowly, crying without sound now — that hollow kind of crying that comes when grief is too big for noise.
"Reena..."
Then something switched in Mom's eyes.
She stood up.
"I need to call the police."
She turned and looked directly at Sin.
"I'm sending you to jail."
"That's — that's not fair." Sin's voice came out fractured, stuttering. "I came down for food. You slapped me first. It wasn't — I didn't mean—"
Mom crossed the distance between them in three steps and started hitting him. Over and over, her voice breaking apart with each blow.
"For a phone. You killed Reena for a phone."
Sin's cheek burned red. He didn't fight back.
Mom grabbed the phone off the table.
"Mom, please—" Sin's voice dropped to something small, almost unrecognizable. "I'm sorry. I'll never ask for anything again. Please don't call them. Please."
"Hello?" The voice on the other end was calm. Professional.
"Hello—" Mom's voice failed her completely.
"Hello? Is someone there?"
She steadied herself with one breath.
"My daughter's been killed."
"Mom, stop—" Sin stepped forward. "I didn't kill anyone. It was an accident. You're my mother. How can you do this to me?"
She didn't look at him.
The operator asked for the address. Mom gave it.
She hung up and sat down on the floor next to Reena.
Sin stared at her.
"Mom... you don't love me."
Her hands started trembling. She raised one — then stopped. Let it fall.
Maybe she was thinking about Reena. Maybe she was thinking about herself. Maybe somewhere in the wreckage of that moment, she understood that she'd played a part in this too.
She didn't answer him.
Sin's mind started filling with dark water.
She wants to send me to jail. Her own son. She never loved me — she just pretended. That's why I always had to fight for everything. That's why nothing ever came easily.
The police will take me away.
I have to run.
"Mom." His voice cracked one last time. "I didn't kill Reena."
She kept staring at the floor.
Sin ran.
He hit the street running, burst out of the apartment building into the open night air — and froze for just a second.
He'd forgotten what outside felt like.
Sirens in the distance. Getting closer.
Sin looked left. Looked right. Then sprinted toward the darkness, away from the lights, away from the sound.
His lungs burned. His thoughts were louder than his footsteps.
I didn't do it. It was an accident. She doesn't love me. The police are coming. Where do I go. There's nowhere to go. She gave them the address. They'll find me everywhere—
He didn't notice the road.
He didn't notice the headlights until they were right in his face.
He stopped.
He didn't understand in time.
The car hit him and kept going.
Sin hit the ground hard.
The world tilted sideways. The sky above him blurred into streetlights and faces — strangers crowding in from nowhere, voices layering over each other in a wash of noise he couldn't parse.
Are they here to catch me?
"Someone call an ambulance!"
An ambulance? Why? What happened?
He genuinely didn't know. His body had stopped sending him information. There was no pain — just a spreading heaviness, like being slowly pressed into the concrete.
"My chest—" he tried to say. "Why can't I breathe?"
No one heard him.
The voices got farther away.
The streetlights dimmed.
And Sin's breathing — shallow, confused, afraid — finally stopped.
Tonight, a mother lost both her children.